In order, I've owned a NES, Genesis, N64, PS1, Gamecube, and PS2. The only next-gen system I'll be buying is Nintendo's. I'll happily play the PS3 if a friend buys one, but I'm not paying more than the cost of replacing my computer's guts for the priveledge of playing the same games with prettier graphics. I haven't given MS any money since the late 1990s, and I've never picked up an XBox controller.
I suggest you check someone's post history before attempting to troll them. I don't believe your goal was to be laughed at.
I'm aware that with all these technologies, the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households. I think everyone can still buy it if they wanted to... I'm not going to reveal its price today. I'm going to only say that it'll be expensive.
I don't know about you, but I don't see those comments as indicating the potential for higher market penetration. How many casual gamers are going to fork over the dough for a system that's already received a price warning?
The software business for PlayStation 3 will continue to grow. PlayStation 2 has more software on it than PlayStation 1 - more units sold in more countries to a wider demographic of consumers. PlayStation 3 will continue to grow the market and will generate a bigger opportunity for everybody - retailers, developers, and publishers alike.
Looks like Sony is banking on increasing market penetration. (At the price they'll be charging? Are they insane?). Nintendo says that the market is pretty much tapped out and a new market needs to be targeted in order to grow.
(Yeah, -1 for obviousness, but I find it interesting.)
I also have to pay for meds, so I understand the "WTF" aspect of drug costs, especially when paying for them out of pocket (that was a nasty shock when they forgot to factor in my health insurance).
I just get somewhat annoyed when people who aren't in biotech want to know why we don't have cures for cancer/HIV/the common cold, and why we can't get them out faster and cheaper.
That said, the salaries of CEOs of the successful companies are absolutely insane.
If pharmacutical companies are spending so much that the entire company would cease to exist due to losing the ability to hold onto patents, then perhaps they should cut costs and find cheaper ways of doing the same thing.
I work with tens of thousands of dollars of equipment each day. So will any other person in a biotech lab. Why do we pay so much money on equipment? Because, believe it or not, it costs less in the end to not pay for all the man-hours. When your staff is full of PhDs and MDs (some people having both), you want to make the most of their time.
Then there are some costs that just can't be avoided. Clinical testing costs a shitload. Would you like to make a list of hundreds of thousands of people who are willing to go on helpful (best case), useless (the majority) or dangerous (worst case) drug regimens for free? That would certainly help reduce the cost.
I also wonder how much of that high cost goes to patent lawyers and other people who wouldn't personally make money with the current patent system.
Here's the breakdown of the company I work for, full-time staff as listed on our internal webpage.
Biology: 38
Business development: 2
Chemistry: 23
Clinical: 27
Corporate: 2
Finance and Administration, Accounting, Facilities, IT, Purchasing: 15
HR: 3
IP and Legal: 7
Pharmaceutical Development: 28
Total full-time employees: 145
FT scientists: 116
FT legal team: 7
FT "support" staff: 22
Let's not forget the huge amount spent on marketing (TV, etc) and sales (50% of the people in the waiting room at my doctor's office are pretty sales ladies).
That only becomes relevant when the company gets something to market. Many companies are stuck in clinical, and some of them are going to fold because, after spending hundreds of millions of dollars, their drug won't be approved by the FDA. Drug development is a crapshoot, and taking that magnitude of risk without the corresponding magnitude of payoff is financially suicidal.
You've got to be shitting me. I work at a pharma company that has a handful of compounds in phase 1 and 2 trials, but nothing on the market. We've been through millions of dollars to get this far. If there weren't any patents, we'd be producing the competitors' compounds and trying to undercut them, not testing dozens of compounds each week in the hope of finding something better. Developing drugs is insanely expensive, and it's not going to happen without the possibility of hitting the jackpot.
Chording keyboards hae been since the invention of the stenotype machine in the late 1800s, enabling those willing to master what the Ars Technica article calls a "steep learning curve" to attain speeds of 225 wpm or about three times the speed of a comparably skilled typist.
How many people can think at 225 wpm? How many people can sustain clear and coherent thinking at 225 wpm? I type as I hear the words in my head so I can be reasonably sure that I'm not skipping anything; what's the point of communicating really fast if the information is too garbled to be understood by other people? When I think, my brain makes all sorts of shortcuts that just don't translate well into text; if my thinking speed overtakes my typing speed, words be dropped or condensin way cant bunderstood sily.
Like the sibling post, I'd also like to see the reference for 225 wpm.
The first game that came to my mind when I was thinking of games as art is The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.
The first example that came into my head was the sequence in Windwaker where Link is sent to the Hyrule that's frozen in time. It filled me with a sense of loss, seeing it static and muted. When it was unfrozen, it took my breath away and I longed to explore it.
With a PS3 Japan release in November, I'm wondering what the release schedule for Sony and Nintendo will look like. Here are what I think the most likely release schedules are (in no particular order), with the assumption that Sony will not try for a simultaneous release (as per their previous consoles).
Scenario 1: Sony releases just before Nintendo in both Japan and the US, with all releases staggered.
PS3 (Japan), Rev (Japan), PS3 (US), Rev (US) Sony, having released first in both regions (plus brand name), would have the clear advantage.
Scenario 2: Nintendo releases earlier than expected and hits the market just before Sony; alternately, Sony has problems releasing by early November and falls behind by a week or two. Again, releases are staggered.
Rev (Japan), PS3 (Japan), Rev (US), Sony (US) Not sure how they would play out. Sony would probably have the edge in the US on virtue of brand name, but it would be somewhat reduced since they would be releasing later. Japan could be anywhere from lopsided to dead even, depending how well the Revolution sells.
Scenario 3: Sony releases first in Japan, Nintendo goes with a simultaneous release and Sony follows in the US. This assumes that the Revolution will be faster to manufacture, something that is entirely possible.
PS3 (Japan), Rev (Japan and US), PS3 (US) This could be quite interesting. I'm also thinking it's the most likely. Nintendo would get good buzz from the simultaneous release and would beat Sony to market in the US.
Scenario 4: Nintendo is able to churn out the Revolution far faster than Sony can put out the PS3. Sony receives additional spec delays and/or has slow manufacturing. Nintendo does a simultanous release before Sony even hits Japan.
Rev (Japan and US), PS3 (Japan), PS3 (US) This would be the best case scenario for Nintendo and the worst for Sony. Nintendo would have an impressive amount of buzz (simulaneous release) and Sony would be dragged down by the rumors of delays and being unable to release as impressively as Nintendo.
I've left out a few variations in release schedules, but I don't believe they would change the results very much.
If I hadn't already posted in this thread, you would be getting one of my mod points.
The whole problem with these articles is that the writers are BSing and calling it "analysis." They all have the same general knowledge, but most of their conclusions discount certain bits of information to push their bias.
Actually, I think that's true of video game "reporting" in general.
At first you sounded like a knee-jerk animal rights activist. Then when I got to your last line, it became apparent that you're a trolling moron.
They're for pharmaceutical research. Or did you think that biologists don't have moral problems creating and testing drugs on humans without the benefit of animal models?
When I saw this as a preview, I wondered why this could be considered news. Anyone who works in biotech is familiar with specialty mice and the companies that make and breed them.
Then I realized that given the makeup of/. (lots of "hard science" geeks), this could be considered new information to a number of people here. But still, news? I can only assume that when an old topic hits CNN, it suddenly becomes news again.
I certainly wouldn't give them everything I have, but I'd like to have another place (other than cds) for backing up my older.wpds,.docs,.rtfs,.pdfs, etc as well as games saves, bizarrely formatted email archives (Juno, I'm looking at you), and other odds and ends. I wouldn't use it to store anything I could consider sensitive, but when it comes to old data I'd like to keep, I definitely appreciate redundency.
As soon as the PRC demands them, Google will hand them over and claim it was merely "following the law".
Considering Google's response to the US government recently, I'm not sure they'll roll over that fast. They'll probably resist as long as possible and wait for the government to back down.
It's a calculated risk on Google's part. Obviously, they think that they can pull it off. Whether it actually works remains to be seen.
Nobody at all recommends Google. More proof that Google search is not as good.
I have to assume you're trolling. If you ask a search engine to return hits for "search engine" it should give you... a list of search engines. Where does "recommending" them come into play? In fact, if it puts itself at the top of the list, I'm going to assume it's biased, won't give me unfiltered results for other searches, and just plain won't use it.
And anyways, your "results" for "recommended" search engines aren't even accurate. You must be trolling.
cool schemes( like break in durring class to get a jump on competition)
As a non-computer person, your comment prompted me to immediately think of non-technical (unexpected) ways to get a leg up on the other team. Espionage, for example. It's a Real World tool, but I don't think it would be considered fair at a university.
A course on espionage would be awesome. Sign me up!
I'm stunned that you spent that much time on/. going into the origins of life. Might you perhaps be a fellow biologist? If not, you're a most educated layman.;)
It's nice that there is a combination of cell enzymes and proteins in this virus, but is it because the Mimivirus devolved from an original cell, or evolved closer to a cell, due to some kind of copy error that grabbed some DNA from a host?
"Evolved closer to a cell" ignores the fact that there are many different ways of obtaining the same end result and implies that there's only one way to code for any of those proteins. Identical sequences arising from chance are virtually impossible.
Obviously we're not sure what the history was, but that's the point of more research. It's unlikely (if not impossible) that the answer will ever be known 100%, but new research will start tipping it one way or another (whether it's a descendent or simply grabbed some DNA).
BTW, it's a feature, not a bug.;) In all seriousness, people have known for some time that there are some interesting ways to copy and insert DNA into other genomes, and some people have suggested that evolution has been driven by these swaps. They'd be idiots to not consider it as a possibility.
I don't doubt that viruses have evolved, but they very well may have evolved separately from other life, and finding one that is a hybrid raises more questions than it answers.
AFAIK, that has been the theory for some time. A hybrid suggests that virii and/or cells have spent eons copying DNA from each other (either by accident or on purpose) and doesn't add anything new to our bank of knowledge. That's why people are jumping on the new, more exciting idea.
You're right to take this with a grain of salt. But if they're right, they hit on something really, really big.
It implies that virii are not a different branch of life (if you classify them as alive), but that they are a sub-branch on one of the trees we've already constructed (or that cells are a sub-branch of virii, depending on how you view it). If we assume that similar elements of virii and bacteria are from a common ancestor, we now have those elements are necessary components of that unknown ancestor and can start to make a (mental) sketch of what it may have been like.
If one assumes that virii and cells have unrelated origins, no common ancestor can be constructed.
The division between virii and cells has much to do with the fact that cells are capable of self-replication and virii are not. If we discover virii that are capable of self-replication (such as a Mimi ancestor), they would probably be classified as cells.
"It has DNA and a membrane and can replicate on its own, but it's still a virus!" "Just call it a cell. Unless you'd like to change the definition?"
The viruses need the single celled organisms to replicate... but the single celled organisms couldn't realy evolve into proper single celled organisms until the viruses came along to do it...
Did you RTFA? The scientists suggest that a virus similar to Mimi is descended from a cell, or that ancient cells looked somewhat like Mimi. They're not saying that Mimi is the Mother Cell, or that cells only existed once virii were around. They're saying that something like Mimi may have been one of the earliest cells/virii/what-have-you, and that virii (like Mimi) may have accelerated the evolution of unicellular lifeforms by inserting themselves into those cells.
Those Mimi-precursors would not have needed cells to replicate, as they might have been what we consider proper cells and thus self-replicated.
Slashdot Mirror
The pink! My poor retinas!
Ahahahahahahaha. Thanks for the laugh.
In order, I've owned a NES, Genesis, N64, PS1, Gamecube, and PS2. The only next-gen system I'll be buying is Nintendo's. I'll happily play the PS3 if a friend buys one, but I'm not paying more than the cost of replacing my computer's guts for the priveledge of playing the same games with prettier graphics. I haven't given MS any money since the late 1990s, and I've never picked up an XBox controller.
I suggest you check someone's post history before attempting to troll them. I don't believe your goal was to be laughed at.
I'm aware that with all these technologies, the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households. I think everyone can still buy it if they wanted to... I'm not going to reveal its price today. I'm going to only say that it'll be expensive.
Reference here.
I don't know about you, but I don't see those comments as indicating the potential for higher market penetration. How many casual gamers are going to fork over the dough for a system that's already received a price warning?
Looks like Sony is banking on increasing market penetration. (At the price they'll be charging? Are they insane?). Nintendo says that the market is pretty much tapped out and a new market needs to be targeted in order to grow.
(Yeah, -1 for obviousness, but I find it interesting.)
I also have to pay for meds, so I understand the "WTF" aspect of drug costs, especially when paying for them out of pocket (that was a nasty shock when they forgot to factor in my health insurance).
I just get somewhat annoyed when people who aren't in biotech want to know why we don't have cures for cancer/HIV/the common cold, and why we can't get them out faster and cheaper.
That said, the salaries of CEOs of the successful companies are absolutely insane.
I work with tens of thousands of dollars of equipment each day. So will any other person in a biotech lab. Why do we pay so much money on equipment? Because, believe it or not, it costs less in the end to not pay for all the man-hours. When your staff is full of PhDs and MDs (some people having both), you want to make the most of their time.
Then there are some costs that just can't be avoided. Clinical testing costs a shitload. Would you like to make a list of hundreds of thousands of people who are willing to go on helpful (best case), useless (the majority) or dangerous (worst case) drug regimens for free? That would certainly help reduce the cost.
I also wonder how much of that high cost goes to patent lawyers and other people who wouldn't personally make money with the current patent system.
Here's the breakdown of the company I work for, full-time staff as listed on our internal webpage.
Biology: 38
Business development: 2
Chemistry: 23
Clinical: 27
Corporate: 2
Finance and Administration, Accounting, Facilities, IT, Purchasing: 15
HR: 3
IP and Legal: 7
Pharmaceutical Development: 28
Total full-time employees: 145
FT scientists: 116
FT legal team: 7
FT "support" staff: 22
Let's not forget the huge amount spent on marketing (TV, etc) and sales (50% of the people in the waiting room at my doctor's office are pretty sales ladies).
That only becomes relevant when the company gets something to market. Many companies are stuck in clinical, and some of them are going to fold because, after spending hundreds of millions of dollars, their drug won't be approved by the FDA. Drug development is a crapshoot, and taking that magnitude of risk without the corresponding magnitude of payoff is financially suicidal.
You've got to be shitting me. I work at a pharma company that has a handful of compounds in phase 1 and 2 trials, but nothing on the market. We've been through millions of dollars to get this far. If there weren't any patents, we'd be producing the competitors' compounds and trying to undercut them, not testing dozens of compounds each week in the hope of finding something better. Developing drugs is insanely expensive, and it's not going to happen without the possibility of hitting the jackpot.
How many people can think at 225 wpm? How many people can sustain clear and coherent thinking at 225 wpm? I type as I hear the words in my head so I can be reasonably sure that I'm not skipping anything; what's the point of communicating really fast if the information is too garbled to be understood by other people? When I think, my brain makes all sorts of shortcuts that just don't translate well into text; if my thinking speed overtakes my typing speed, words be dropped or condensin way cant bunderstood sily.
Like the sibling post, I'd also like to see the reference for 225 wpm.
The first example that came into my head was the sequence in Windwaker where Link is sent to the Hyrule that's frozen in time. It filled me with a sense of loss, seeing it static and muted. When it was unfrozen, it took my breath away and I longed to explore it.
With a PS3 Japan release in November, I'm wondering what the release schedule for Sony and Nintendo will look like. Here are what I think the most likely release schedules are (in no particular order), with the assumption that Sony will not try for a simultaneous release (as per their previous consoles).
Scenario 1: Sony releases just before Nintendo in both Japan and the US, with all releases staggered.
PS3 (Japan), Rev (Japan), PS3 (US), Rev (US)
Sony, having released first in both regions (plus brand name), would have the clear advantage.
Scenario 2: Nintendo releases earlier than expected and hits the market just before Sony; alternately, Sony has problems releasing by early November and falls behind by a week or two. Again, releases are staggered.
Rev (Japan), PS3 (Japan), Rev (US), Sony (US)
Not sure how they would play out. Sony would probably have the edge in the US on virtue of brand name, but it would be somewhat reduced since they would be releasing later. Japan could be anywhere from lopsided to dead even, depending how well the Revolution sells.
Scenario 3: Sony releases first in Japan, Nintendo goes with a simultaneous release and Sony follows in the US. This assumes that the Revolution will be faster to manufacture, something that is entirely possible.
PS3 (Japan), Rev (Japan and US), PS3 (US)
This could be quite interesting. I'm also thinking it's the most likely. Nintendo would get good buzz from the simultaneous release and would beat Sony to market in the US.
Scenario 4: Nintendo is able to churn out the Revolution far faster than Sony can put out the PS3. Sony receives additional spec delays and/or has slow manufacturing. Nintendo does a simultanous release before Sony even hits Japan.
Rev (Japan and US), PS3 (Japan), PS3 (US)
This would be the best case scenario for Nintendo and the worst for Sony. Nintendo would have an impressive amount of buzz (simulaneous release) and Sony would be dragged down by the rumors of delays and being unable to release as impressively as Nintendo.
I've left out a few variations in release schedules, but I don't believe they would change the results very much.
If I hadn't already posted in this thread, you would be getting one of my mod points.
The whole problem with these articles is that the writers are BSing and calling it "analysis." They all have the same general knowledge, but most of their conclusions discount certain bits of information to push their bias.
Actually, I think that's true of video game "reporting" in general.
In the USA. Overall, Nintendo actually sold slightly more consoles than MS. Don't discount how well they do in Japan.
Had your polio vaccinations? Happy that you'll never get smallpox? Thank animal research.
Consider it a necessary evil.
At first you sounded like a knee-jerk animal rights activist. Then when I got to your last line, it became apparent that you're a trolling moron.
They're for pharmaceutical research. Or did you think that biologists don't have moral problems creating and testing drugs on humans without the benefit of animal models?
Then I realized that given the makeup of /. (lots of "hard science" geeks), this could be considered new information to a number of people here. But still, news? I can only assume that when an old topic hits CNN, it suddenly becomes news again.
I certainly wouldn't give them everything I have, but I'd like to have another place (other than cds) for backing up my older .wpds, .docs, .rtfs, .pdfs, etc as well as games saves, bizarrely formatted email archives (Juno, I'm looking at you), and other odds and ends. I wouldn't use it to store anything I could consider sensitive, but when it comes to old data I'd like to keep, I definitely appreciate redundency.
I know this is a popular vote, so it's going to be heavily skewed to whatever is recent and flashy, but still...
I'm both scratching my head at the voters for placing FFX at #1 and thanking them for putting FFX-2 down at #32.
Considering Google's response to the US government recently, I'm not sure they'll roll over that fast. They'll probably resist as long as possible and wait for the government to back down.
It's a calculated risk on Google's part. Obviously, they think that they can pull it off. Whether it actually works remains to be seen.
I have to assume you're trolling. If you ask a search engine to return hits for "search engine" it should give you... a list of search engines. Where does "recommending" them come into play? In fact, if it puts itself at the top of the list, I'm going to assume it's biased, won't give me unfiltered results for other searches, and just plain won't use it.
And anyways, your "results" for "recommended" search engines aren't even accurate. You must be trolling.
As a non-computer person, your comment prompted me to immediately think of non-technical (unexpected) ways to get a leg up on the other team. Espionage, for example. It's a Real World tool, but I don't think it would be considered fair at a university.
A course on espionage would be awesome. Sign me up!
I'm stunned that you spent that much time on /. going into the origins of life. Might you perhaps be a fellow biologist? If not, you're a most educated layman. ;)
Obviously we're not sure what the history was, but that's the point of more research. It's unlikely (if not impossible) that the answer will ever be known 100%, but new research will start tipping it one way or another (whether it's a descendent or simply grabbed some DNA).
BTW, it's a feature, not a bug. ;) In all seriousness, people have known for some time that there are some interesting ways to copy and insert DNA into other genomes, and some people have suggested that evolution has been driven by these swaps. They'd be idiots to not consider it as a possibility.
AFAIK, that has been the theory for some time. A hybrid suggests that virii and/or cells have spent eons copying DNA from each other (either by accident or on purpose) and doesn't add anything new to our bank of knowledge. That's why people are jumping on the new, more exciting idea.You're right to take this with a grain of salt. But if they're right, they hit on something really, really big.
It implies that virii are not a different branch of life (if you classify them as alive), but that they are a sub-branch on one of the trees we've already constructed (or that cells are a sub-branch of virii, depending on how you view it). If we assume that similar elements of virii and bacteria are from a common ancestor, we now have those elements are necessary components of that unknown ancestor and can start to make a (mental) sketch of what it may have been like.
If one assumes that virii and cells have unrelated origins, no common ancestor can be constructed.
The division between virii and cells has much to do with the fact that cells are capable of self-replication and virii are not. If we discover virii that are capable of self-replication (such as a Mimi ancestor), they would probably be classified as cells.
"It has DNA and a membrane and can replicate on its own, but it's still a virus!"
"Just call it a cell. Unless you'd like to change the definition?"
Those Mimi-precursors would not have needed cells to replicate, as they might have been what we consider proper cells and thus self-replicated.